Rhode Island Red (4 page)

But this time I wasn't out there for the money. I was there for Sig and Mrs. Sig—and for my conscience, which I call Ernestine. Because my do-your-liberated-shit-but-later-pray-you-ain't-gonna-burn-in-hell hypocrisy rates a dorky name like that. Kind of tough to be a wanton when four hundred years of history have been grooming you for that place on the church pew.

A kick from old Ernestine made me suddenly think of my mother. I think maybe she's a little put out that I haven't been calling her so often lately. But she doesn't get too mad, because at least her terminally quirky child is busy with honorable work. Teaching French lit at NYU. Or so Mom thinks, sitting out there in Queens. Damn, I've told a lot of lies to that woman in my lifetime … little lies, big lies … sometimes for next to no reason. And I've no fucking idea why I do it.

How did I come to be this compulsive liar? It must have started with that imagination of mine—the one Mom thought was so wonderful when I was little. The one that got me out of Elmhurst and took me to Paris. That always seems to land me in some new pot of soup no matter how sensibly I'm trying to comport myself.

Anyway, if the morning crowd thought I was nuts, they weren't far wrong. I was running the streets of Manhattan with sixty grand zippered into my overalls.

I circled like a Comanche that day. From Nineteenth Street on the south to Sixty-first Street on the north. From Park on the east side to Ninth Avenue on the west. Then back in the other direction. I was looking for street players. Looking for leads to Sig's lady friend.

And I found street players, in all their infinite variety. Jazz is hardly the only idiom of street music. I figured, however, that the kind of music they played was a lot less important than how they played it—outside, for tips. I thought there would be an automatic brotherhood among the various genres. So I talked to them all. Sax players. Violinists. Steel drummers. Flutists. Guitarists. Truth is, I had heard some pretty good stuff by the time I decided to knock off for a while. But I hadn't found a single musician who knew Sig or the Mrs.

After lunch, which was a sodden piece of microwaved spinach quiche I had at a coffee bar in midtown, I headed for Grand Central Station.

I made my way leisurely through the cavernous rotunda. It had been longer than I realized since I'd been in there. God, how the place had changed! The homeless and the all-purpose psychos, who had for a time transformed the terminal into a haven for lost souls, like something out of nineteenth century London, had disappeared. The station had been face-lifted within an inch of its life: murals restored, ceilings repainted, brass burnished and shining like new shoes. This was the deco era Grand Central of a high budget movie.

And then, as if to underscore the illusion, the music began.

A saxophone—and a very accomplished one indeed—was treating the crowds to
Out of Nowhere
. I followed the melody, the music growing louder as I neared its source. As soon as this guy finished playing, whoever he might turn out to be, I would start my rote interrogation—Hey, man, you play pretty. Know a white musician who calls himself Sig?

But that's where the screenplay took an unexpected turn. When I was a few feet away from the soloist, I saw that he wasn't alone. Nor was he your average street player. He was part of a combo of middle-aged men in uber conservative Brooks Brothers suits. On a folding table nearby they had set, not a hat for donations, but a briefcase, lid open, containing a couple of dozen copies of their latest CD. I looked at the sign next to the case, which listed each of their names and announced that this free lunchtime concert was being sponsored by the City Arts Council as a courtesy to the patrons at Grand Central Station—your basic quality of life innovation. The trio was well known to the so-called jazz cognoscenti. They played all the smart clubs uptown and were unerringly tasteful. No way would any of them know a scruffy guy like Sig.

I kept walking, past the tasteful strains of the next number, but threw a dented quarter into the briefcase, just to put a little shit in the game. I headed down one of the long corridors toward the revolving door that let out onto Vanderbilt Avenue.

Two young black men sporting matted Rasta braids had set up a card table against the window of an empty store in the corridor. One was loudly touting the myriad wares spread out on the table top, at the same time keeping a wary eye out for the cops who might come along at any moment and roust them.

I made a hurried survey of the merchandise—the usual crap: scarves, incense, factory second gym socks, ear muffs, headbands, Afro picks, and so on.

“A mufflah for ya, Sweetart?” the cuter one of them pitched me. “Genuine mohair, sistah, keep you warm when I'm not than to do the job.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Five.”

“Genuine mohair, huh?”

“I look like a liar, mon?”

I chuckled, flirting a little. “No need to get into personalities.”

He looked prepared to press his case, but I had stopped listening by then. A particular group of items displayed on a plaster replica of a human arm had suddenly captured all my attention.

“What are those?” I asked, pointing.

“For you lovely wrist, lady. Two fa each. Three fa five.”

I gave him five bucks and lifted off three of the wrist bands. Stiff Indian leather embossed with an eagle's head. The same ones Siggy was wearing.

“Let me help you,” Mr. Smooth Salesman offered, expertly tying the bands on my wrists and all but copping a feel as he did so.

I took an even closer look at the bracelets. No doubt about it, these were the kind that Charlie Conlin had left on my kitchen table while he showered.

“Thanks a lot,” I said innocently. “Now I want something else.”

He grinned and passed his hand over the table in a gesture of magnanimousness. “Just you tell me, sistah. What else you want today?”

“I want you to tell me if you had a skinny white guy buy a lot of these lately. He would have been carrying a saxophone case most likely. Long hair. Young.”

He cast a glance over at the other man and then turned his eyes back to me.

“Come on, sistah,” he said derisively, “why you want a white mon when you have me?”

“You're very good,” I said, and I meant it, actually. “But I've got to catch a train. Do you know the man or not?”

“Know nobody,” the second guy spoke up then, a frost in his voice like they don't often get down Jamaica way.

“Oh really?” I said pleasantly, a little frightened but brazening it out. “Well, I think maybe you do.”

“No no,” cutey protested, still good natured. “We don't know your mon, sistah.”

“You know what else I think?” I replied.

“What?”

“You look like a liar, mon.”

He smiled wickedly. I took a ten out of my wallet and placed it on the table.

The second guy just shook his head.

“Okay, fellas,” I said with a sigh, “I've got to make a quick decision here. I've got three phrases running around in my head. And I don't know which one is going to get me my answer the fastest when I start screaming. So let me try all three of them out on you. Number one: rape! Number two: vendor's license. Number three: green card.”

Salesman Two started for me at that moment, but the smoothie put up a staying hand. “Mon didn't buy them,” he said to me, voice suddenly affectless. “We give them to him for being lookout when we work Penn Station. He hang with old dude name of Wild Bill. They hustle, same as us. Okay, sistah?”

“Just fine,” I said.

“Sorry to see you go, Sweetart.”

Later that afternoon, a commuter in a tan raincoat—of all people—led me out of the wilderness. Just before he turned into Penn Station, the man called out to a musician standing nearby, “How's it going, Wild Bill?” and pressed a couple of bucks into the guy's pocket.

Wild Bill was trumpeting something that might have been pretty and autumnal if weren't for the bitter hootiness in his tone. He reminded me of a mezzo past her prime, straining hideously for the same note that had once poured out of her throat like good vodka over ice.

The man who was playing looked, in fact, more like a clowned-out decoy at the rodeo than a jazz musician.

He wasn't young. But through the zigzags of white in his hair I could plainly see the remnants of flaming Malcolm X red.
Poil de carotte
, as we say in French.

The map of the colored man in America was written on his face. Yes, the black past was there, but there was something else.

I approached him in the same way I'd done with all the other musicians I'd interviewed during the day—walking up close to the person, listening attentively to his number, and then, without making too big a deal of it, leaving a donation in the hat or instrument case at the feet of the player. Then I leaned in casually and asked if by any chance he knew a white guy named Sig who blew alto.

Wild Bill laid his trumpet in its case, on top of my five. He straightened his dirty scarlet tie and checked his beaten up shoes for scuffs …
and
adjusted his suit jacket and pinched the pleat in one greasy trouser leg. All without making a second's worth of eye contact with me.

I was beginning to feel like a housefly.

When I repeated my question about Sig, he deigned to acknowledge me. Wild Bill looked me up and down. But there was no hint of lasciviousness in his glance.

“I was wondering if you've seen Sig lately,” I said politely.

“Yeah, I saw him … Have you seen a beautician lately?”

Aha. So that was what I'd glimpsed in his face: he was mean.

When he was through cackling, he turned his head slightly, coughed and lit a cigarette.

I let him have that one. He knew Sig. I couldn't afford to unsheathe my rapier wit just now. Instead, I pressed on in the same pleasant tone. “When was it that you saw him, Wild Bill?”

“Two, three days,” he offered. Like we were friends now.

“Wow,” I said. “I've got a gig for him but I can't find him anywhere. Friend of mine wants him to play at his wedding. Any idea where his lady is … uh … whatshername?”

“Inge.”

“Right, Inge. Know where she is? I could just give the message to her.”

“‘Message' is just about right, baby. You look like the mailman in those threads.”

Okay, that made two
. I've never been a baseball fan, but everybody knows, three strikes and you're dead.

Still, I remained calm and good humored. And in a few minutes—thank the baby Jesus—Wild Bill grew tired of me. And just told me straight out, in plain English, no more zaps, that I would find Siggy's girlfriend near the school on Twenty-sixth and Seventh.

The “school” was the Fashion Institute of Technology.

The street was popping with activity: traffic bombing then crawling down Seventh Avenue, students resplendent in their downtown anti-fashion chic, luncheonette busboys in dirty aprons, wealthy ladies hailing cabs to all manner of late afternoon assignations in Soho. And then there was Inge.

She was seated on an old camp stool, her appreciative little audience forming a semicircle about her. There was her hat. There was her sax. There were her dead blue eyes and her dirty blond hair. There was her big rust colored seeing eye dog … Lord have mercy she was blind.

She was playing
September Song
. She was awful. But a white man was crying anyway. I waited out her set, trying to decide what to say to her. She treated us to a touchingly incompetent
Lost in the Stars
. Then she tackled
Speak Low
. And finished up, after that mini Kurt Weill festival, with a few pitiful riffs of
Cherokee
. Damn, thought I, life is strange.

The people dispersed and she began to feel her way through the take in her hat. In a minute she stopped, cocking her head in my direction. But she remained silent, the smallest little smile on her lips.

Finally I spoke up. “Inge?”

“Yes?”

Asked and answered. Now what was I going to say? I wasn't ready.

“You're Siggy's friend, aren't you?” I improvised.

At the mention of his name her hand went up to the top button of her denim jacket. “Yes. Who's there?”

I was trying to pull some kind of semi-coherent lie together, but my mind wasn't turning over fast enough.

“Who's there?” she asked again. “Who is it?”

“My name is Ann. I—I'm a friend of Sig's.”

“Where is he? Where's he been?”

There were freckles across the bridge of her nose. She became prettier the longer you looked at her. In fact she looked a little like Sig.

“Listen, Inge, I need to talk to you.”

The dog at her feet seemed to look up expectantly at me. He was massive and sad-looking, and when he got to his feet it was as if they hurt him.

“I need to talk to you alone. Can we go someplace private?” I asked.

She snorted, as if I'd said something funny. Maybe the whole world is private if you're blind.

“I live close,” she said. Inge packed up quickly and then leaned down to give a gentle tug on the dog's kerchief. “Let's go home, Bruno. Good boy.”

With every step, Bruno threatened to get himself tangled up in her legs—almost tripping her—but she walked on nimbly.

I followed her wordlessly through the streets, too embarrassed to offer my arm at the crosswalk. The sax was plainly not this girl's calling. I wondered if she could sing, wondered if she had some kind of crazed Ray Charles fantasy working—hey, I'm soulful, I'm hip, I'm blind. Or maybe it was Sig who had that particular fantasy. Perhaps that had been part of his attraction to her. I flashed pruriently on the two of them making love, her willowy body moving under him, breath clogging, eyes staring at nothing. Well, maybe not at nothing; how did I know what she saw?

She lived in a brownstone between Sixth and Broadway. On the ground floor was a wholesale florist. We walked up a flight and then straight back to a plain, big, square of a room at the end of a hallway. Little furniture except a bed and chair and a plush little mattress for Bruno.